High In Fiber

Josh reminds us all of the tale of the ant and the grasshopper. The ant torrented terabytes of pornography to see him through the harsh winter and kept redundant backups of his data, both on external hard drives and in the cloud. While the foolish grasshopper had a paper bag with a Hustler, a Juggs and two Penthouse Forums, which he eventually had to eat to survive. And he DID survive. Up until he died, choking on a letter from a guy who “never dreamed this would happen to me, but…”

Google keeps announcing different, random shithole towns as test beds for Google Fiber. Yes, I know Austin, TX is on the list. Here’s the deal: if they are putting amazing, futuristic tech services in Austin BEFORE Dallas (where I am), then I know they aren’t taking this whole thing seriously. “Hello, Google Fiber? I’m in austin and I’d like to have fiber internet installed directly to my bong. Excuse me bongS. Why, yes, I AM a bass player.”

COMMENTERS: Have you ever had to wait for a fun, fancy or futurey tech service (or any kind of service) to come to your town or even your country? I know Canada JUST got Square. That shit changed my life. Does anyone NOT have Netflix at this point? What about something as essential as phone lines or power? WHY DON’T YOU HAVE POWER? DO YOU LIVE IN A VOLCANO?!

Comments (15)

We don’t have mail delivery where I live. You have to go to the post office, and god help you if you need to pick up a package because it is only open the hours you are at work. It rather negates the convenience online shopping…

I live in the arctic and depend on satellites for my internet. We can’t use Netflix because I’m pretty sure it would cause the satellites to explode and rain fiery doom down across Canada. My “high speed” is, on a good day, 3 mbps. It would make the baby Jesus cry. Or go on a homicidal spree with an axe. One of the two.

I would just like to be able to get cell phone service in some of the rural parts of Canada I travel to. And decent internet, dial up is the only option in some areas, and it is a pain. All the sites are chock full of animated ads, you have to wait forever for them to load (or half load then stop). I was out in the boonies and trying to deal with customers in December who wanted rush shipping, so I spent all day trying to do basic shipping estimates.
This was not working, finally I had to phone the nearest couriers and post office and talk to a live person who was irritated that I needed them to get me estimates.
Seriously you don’t know how good you got it, until you have to deal with dial up.

I lived in Honduras for two years and only had access to internet twice a week when I went into town. This was assuming that the internet cafes actually had working internet that day and that I could get to town, since sometimes heavy rains that made the rivers too high to cross by Land Cruiser. I went a month without internet before, and even when I could use the internet, it was so slow that all I did was let family and friends know I was still alive. Electricity and water were spotty too. Also my Honduran cell phone only worked occasionally. The developing world is fun.

Verizon ran fiber through my front yard; snagged my water line in the process. Turns out it was for one of their 4G towers, so I’m stuck with DSL. Everything [gas, muni water, cable, muni waste hauling, etc] seems to stop at the town line… half a mile that-a-way

I could get FIOS if I lived 3 blocks to the east. But I was dumb and didn’t figure out that my nice house was actually still in Baltimore City until after I committed to moving in. Baltimore City has a monopoly order in place for Comcast until at least 2016. I’m hoping it doesn’t get renewed at that time but really what is their incentive for not renewing it? We aren’t likely to get Google Fiber any time in this decade.

My wife and I moved to Provo in 11 so I could do three years of grad school (the best deal we found). We promised ourselves we would move away, ANYWHERE, after the three years.
Now Google Fiber is coming to our dorky, podunk little town, and we’re not as sure about the moving away part.